


Show Your Hand

by Hyacinthz



Series: Show Your Hand [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Stan never remembers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-29 22:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19839763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthz/pseuds/Hyacinthz
Summary: Stan doesn't remember. Ford's got to remind him.





	Show Your Hand

Eventually, he just has to choose.

Because the kids, _the kids_. The Shack’s been a tomb for days and he refuses to have the kids spend their last days in town like this. Stanley wouldn’t let it happen, and neither will he.

He’s a new, weird person. He’s too old for this, to feel like Bill burnt all of him away and left a delicate stranger living in his pink skin. So he sits them both down in Stan’s bedroom and locks the door before floating the idea.

Stanley looks older without his memories, and it’s no wonder. They’re the same right now for different reasons; Ford feels raw and new, and Stanley’s forgotten he needs a hard shell. They sit side by side on the bed, closer than they would before Weirdmageddon.

“I need to tell you things,” Ford says, fingers twisted up in the left sleeve of his sweater. “I wanted—I wanted to let it happen in time. I think it will, you know. But I love those kids, Stanley. And if there’s something I could’ve done before they leave—I have to try. It’s your choice.”

Stan always looks him in the eyes, now. “They’re good kids. So lay it on me. I’m Stan, you’re Ford. What’s next?”

Stanley is smart. He knows some of the things. He picked up the shape of his interactions with the kids, with Soos and Wendy almost instantly. “The first thing: you’ve got to know how much those kids love you. That’s—that’s the most important.”

“I know that, I think. A little of it. They—you. You called me hero, remember?”

Ford smiles, feels his lips twist up into something feeble. “That’s the other thing. You’ve been my hero. But I—” It comes on so suddenly, frailty. Because Ford is strong and clever and an idiot, and he’s wasted all this time. He hides his face in his hands, he knocks his glasses up his forehead to scrub at his eyes. “I fucked it up, Stanley. So badly. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.” Big hands around his wrists. It’s always been that way. “Hey, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard anyone curse for real here. Hey.” Stan looks him in the eyes now, and he’s always been able to see him when he bothered to look. “You’re my brother?”

Three words tie every era of Ford’s life together in a neat bundle. But they’ve never once been a question before, always a statement. A promise. “Stanley, you’re my twin.”

Stan nods, like he can just hear a piece of his personal history and declare it good. “Runs in the family. Tell me more. Tell me—what’s the last time you explained something to me? Like this?”

 _Grammar, Stanley._ “Hey,” Stan interrupts, socks him lightly. “Stop it with that face. Like this. Something good.”

He can always see when he bothers looking. “I think. We must’ve been seventeen. We had bunk beds. You had the top bunk, but you were too big for it. You were always hitting your head.”

“’Course I did. ‘Course I was.”

“I think—” he struggles for a moment. When he remembers, it comes with all the excitement of a breakthrough. “I think I wasn’t telling you anything at all! You were explaining to me, do you rem—I mean.” He takes a breath. “It was about the thousandth time, but you were telling me about football.”

“Did I play?”

“No, you’re a boxer.” _I’ve got the other thing. What’s it called?? Oh right._ “You could’ve played, you know. You'd be good at it. But you didn’t. I was glad,” he says, and only knows it’s true as he says it. “You already had some friends and a girl and a car—I’d never see you again if you picked up another sport.”

“So what I’m hearing is: I’m the cool twin.”

“I have a laser gun, Stanley. Maybe once you’d have won that fight. But I have it on good authority that I’m the alpha twin.”

“Being older doesn’t make you cooler, Ford.” Ford’s heart misses a beat. “What’s with that anyway, mister laser gun? Why didn’t you have friends?”

Ford holds up his hands, fingers splayed. “But I had you.”

“That’s stupid. That’s just your fingers, who gives a shit? Tell me I punched the bastards.”

“Every one of them. Some more than once.”

“Well there you go, I was good for something, huh?” It’s the worst thing he could say. The worst. It curls Ford over on himself, makes him hide so his brother doesn’t think him more of a madman. He can’t keep his face from showing—he can’t. “Oof, hit a nerve. So tell me something I was good for then, huh? Why was I telling you about football?”

Ford doesn’t uncover his face, he speaks through the harsh breaths. “It helped—it helped me concentrate. I was working on a project—an invention. It always helped me work, listening to you. You were in on it, you know? It’s why you told me about football even though I knew already. You’d tell me the real stuff later, when I was listening again.”

“Listen,” Stan says. His hand is on Ford’s shoulder, warm but hovering, ready to leave. “Listen, I don't want to start shit. I've got this feeling we both did that plenty. Just trying to understand: why haven't we talked—like this, like really—since we were seventeen?”

Ford tells him. He tells him everything. One of the things Stan woke up with was a baseline for normal; he’d picked up quickly how _weird_ Gravity Falls is. So Stan blinks grimly through Ford’s careening explanation of beaches and brands and portals and demons and dimensions on dimensions. And he doesn’t interrupt for anything.

“No wonder you’re so sad,” Stan says once Ford stops to gasp for breath and brace for a reaction. “You knucklehead; forget it already. I have. You’re my brother.”

“You don’t understand,” Ford says. “Stanley, I as good as killed you.”

There’s a sharpness to Stanley’s eyes that comes out at the strangest times. Ford can’t remember it from their childhood. “Seems to me a lot of this could’ve been avoided if we stopped guessing what people understand.”

Ford can’t speak past that.

“And I am telling you,” Stan continues. “That we can’t go backward. I don’t have time for all this. Don’t know if you noticed, but we’re old. Don’t know if you noticed, but those kids are going home in three days. Don’t know if you noticed it, Ford, but I’m actually still kicking. From what you’re telling me, we could all be dead! So I lost some stuff, okay. Am I really so different you’re ready to spend the rest of your life kicking yourself when I’m right here, forgiving you?”

“You’d forgive me?”

“I thought you were the smart one, are you dense? It’s past tense, I _forgave_ you. Just now. I’ll do it again this time tomorrow if you really want—but after that, don’t push your luck.” Ford can’t look away from him. “Three days, you dork. ‘S all we got left with the kids. Unlock the door and quit wasting it, would you? And after that, let’s do it better, you and me. What?”

“I just don’t understand,” Ford says, soft. “I don’t understand how you can shoplift from every store and fleece tourists shamelessly and _steal my identity for thirty years_ and still be the better person.”

“Hey, I plead memory gun to the identity thing.” It doesn’t even hurt for once, those words. “And that Soos is a bad influence, you hear me? I’m impressionable. As for _better person,_ you said it, not me. Remember that.”

“Oh, you’ll remind me. I know you.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Stan looks pleased. “You do. Always will, right? That’s enough.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ford says. Something in his core had been sick with this; it’s settling now. He’s got to remember how to feel this way. “Right. Let’s do it better, you and me.”

Stan thumps him in the chest with the back of his hand, easy. “Come on, Poindexter, grammar. It’s _you and I_.”

Ford laughs until he cries, Stan’s arm anchored tight across his shoulders all the while. He sobs with it until Soos picks the lock to see what’s happening and the children barrel in. Summer moves forward and, eventually, ends. They go on from there.

They do it better.

**Author's Note:**

> [mcgucket voice] in retrospect, it seems a bit contrived!
> 
> first post :D thanks for reading


End file.
